AROUND THE WORLD – Diddling the Baiaó

AROUND THE WORLD

Diddling the Baiaó

Gary Novak on Chick Corea’s “Discovery”

by Daniel Bédard

Over the years, Chick Corea’s bands have featured a lot of great drumming talent. Steve Gadd, Dave Weckl, Roy Haynes, Jeff Ballard—all of these players brought exciting rhythms to the drumming world. We’re going to focus on a song from Corea’s Time Warp record featuring Gary Novak on drums. More precisely, we’ll take a look at the groove he played on the song “Discovery.”The Baiaó
Novak’s groove is based on the Brazilian baiaó rhythm, which can be described as a cousin to the samba. Baiaó is mostly defined by its ostinato foot pattern, which differs from samba. Here is the main foot pattern.At 0:51, Novak plays alternating 16th notes on the snare, doubling the second 16th with his left hand. This pattern reminds me of a percussionist playing the tamborim, a small tambourine-shaped instrument from Brazil. Try playing the notes softly to create a nice flow.

The Variations
While working on this groove, I came up with some variations based on diddles. These helped me get comfortable and creative with the original pattern.

Now we’ll play two consecutive diddles, which creates a six-stroke roll.

Diddling with 3s, 5s, and 7s
I then used the same concept and started playing diddles in groups of three, five, and seven. This created quite a coordination challenge, as it takes longer for the pattern to resolve. Here are two-bar examples of each grouping.

Groups of Three

Groups of Five

Groups of Seven

Bass Drum Variation
Gary also plays some bass drum variations throughout the track. Here’s one you can use while playing the patterns we just discussed.

I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of Time Warp, as there are a lot of other amazing tracks with Novak’s fiery drumming. He’s one of the best drummers out there. Have fun with these exercises, and happy practicing!